Fountains of Wayne – “A Fine Day for a Parade”

It’s never too late to lose yourself in music. Another victim of the coronavirus, Fountain of Wayne founding member Adam Schlesinger passed away at the end of March. He was 52. In reflecting on this moment in history, I began to wander through the band’s catalog. “A Find Day for a Parade,” off their 1999 sophomore effort, Utopia Parkway, pummeled my eardrums with its sullen, rhythmic beat and profoundly relentless lyrics.

I had never heard the song before, and yet it tapped into the heaviness from which we all ache. “Mrs. Carver says she’s sorry / She knows enough to worry / But what does she know about crime? / Believes the town is sinking,” they begin mid-story, a creative choice that pulls you immediately into their orbit. “The price of forward thinking / You stay up all night half the time.”

“A Fine Day for a Parade” weighs even heavier, as we’re all locked away in our houses, and everything outside seems contaminated. The world is both trapped and continues to march mercilessly ahead. Perhaps the music will free us.